Hesekiel 39:13 Kommentar

This chapter continues and concludes the prophecy against Gog and Magog, in whose destruction God crowns his favour to his people Israel, which shines very brightly after the scattering of that black cloud in the close of this chapter. Here is, I. An express prediction of the utter destruction of Gog and Magog, agreeing with what we had before (Eze 39:1-7). II. An illustration of the vastness of that destruction, in three consequences of it: the burning of their weapons (Eze 39:8-10), the burning of their slain (Eze 39:11-16), and the feasting of the fowls with the dead bodies of those that were unburied (Eze 39:17-22). III. A declaration of God's gracious purposes concerning his people Israel, in this and his other providences concerning them, and a promise of further mercy that he had yet in store for them (Eze 39:23-29).

INTRODUCTION TO EZEKIEL 39 This chapter is a continuation of the prophecy of the destruction of Gog, which is both repeated, and more largely described, Eze 39:1, then follows an account of the burning of his weapons of war, which will last seven years in burning, during which time there will be no need of the use of wood, Eze 39:9, and of the burial of him, and many of his army; the place where, and the time that will be taken up in doing this, even seven months, are observed, Eze 39:11, and every feathered fowl and beast of the field are called upon to feed on the flesh of those that are left unburied, Eze 39:17 and by all this the glory of the Lord will be seen, known, and acknowledged, both by the Heathens, and by the house of Israel, Eze 39:21, and the former will also be informed that the present captivity of the Jews has been for their sins and transgressions, Eze 39:23, and the chapter is concluded with a promise of their return from captivity, when they shall know the Lord, and their interest in him; who will after this no more hide his face from them, but pour out his Spirit upon them, under whose influence they shall ever continue, Eze 39:25.

Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them,.... That is, a great number of the common people of the land of Israel, especially of those that dwell near the field of battle, shall be employed in burying the slain; and which they will be very ready to do, for the reasons above mentioned: and it shall be to them a renown; or, "for a name" (g); they shall be commended for their humanity to their enemies, and shall be spoken of with honour, as being the peculiar people of God, whom he has so remarkably appeared for, protected, and defended: the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord God; the day that will be renown to them will be to the glory of God; whose greatness, goodness, power, and wisdom, will be seen in saving his people, and destroying their enemies. (g) "in nomen", Pagninus, Montanus, Piscator, Cocceius, Starckius.

(Chapter 39, Verse 1 onwards) \"But you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say: 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshek and Tubal. I will turn you around and drag you along. I will bring you from the far north and send you against the mountains of Israel. Then I will strike your bow from your left hand and make your arrows drop from your right hand. On the mountains of Israel you will fall, you and all your troops and the nations with you.' I have given you as food to the wild animals, birds, and all flying creatures, and to the animals of the earth. You will fall on the face of the field (or the plain): for I have spoken, says the Lord God. And I will send fire on Magog, and on those who dwell securely on the islands (or the coastlands): and they will know that I am the Lord. And I will make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel, and I will not allow my holy name to be profaned (or polluted) anymore; and the nations will know that I am the holy Lord of Israel. Behold, it comes, and it will happen (or you will know that it will be), says the Lord (Vulgate adds God): this is the day of which I spoke. And the inhabitants of the cities (Vulgate: of the cities) of Israel will go out and burn weapons, shields, spears (or bucklers and thrusting spears), bows and arrows, staffs of the hands (Vulgate: of the hands), and spears (or lances): and they will set them on fire for seven years. And they will not gather (or take) wood from the fields (or the plains), nor cut down from the forests: for they will burn the weapons with fire, and those who had been their plunder will plunder them; and they will loot their looters, says the Lord God. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give to Gog a place for burial in Israel, the valley of the travelers east of the sea, which will cause those passing by to marvel. (Or the πολυάνδριον of those who come to the sea, and they will build around the mouth of the valley; and there Gog and all his multitude will be buried; and the valley (or Ge ) will be called the multitude of Gog. And the house of Israel will bury them there, to cleanse the land (or so that the land will be cleansed) for seven months. But the whole population of the earth will bury them (Vulg. they are silent) and there will be a day named for them, in which I have been glorified, says the Lord God. And they will continuously appoint men, traversing (or encircling) the earth, who will bury and seek out those who remain (Vulg. remained) upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it. But after seven months they will begin to search. And they will go around exploring the earth: and when they see the bone of a man, they will set up a marker next to it, until the embalmers in the Valley (or Ge ) of the multitude of Gog bury it. The name of the city is Amona (or Polyandrion): and the earth will be cleansed (or will be cleansed). And these are the heirs of the Jewish tradition and the disciples of endless fables, who contend that after a thousand years of reign, Gog, the prince of Ros, Mosoch, and Thubal will be killed in the borders of Israel; and they will be devoured by all the birds and beasts: and the inhabitants of the cities of Israel will not use wood for seven years, but instead will use the weapons of Gog, namely shields and spears, arrows and clubs or poles: but Gog himself will be buried in a valley called Ge in Hebrew, and his tomb will be called polyandrion; where, indeed, a multitude of men will be buried. But he must be buried for seven months from the house of Israel, so that the land may be cleansed. And a glorious day will come when Gog is killed, and those who diligently search for and bury the bones must be appointed, so that nothing remains unburied on the land. After the months have passed, or rather after seven months have passed, a great expanse of land must be traversed; and wherever they see a human bone, they must mark it with a nearby sign, so that it can be buried later by those in charge of this task. And the city must be named Amona, which is called πολυάνδριον in Greek, meaning a multitude of buried men; and thus the land will be cleansed. They said this to him. But we, starting the explanation, will discuss each thing that we proposed, keeping the meaning. Gog himself has his own Trinity: Ros, Mosoch, and Thubal; head, namely, and insanity, and everything; so that there is no vice that does not consist in the possession of Gog. This [person] will be educated, whether revolving or being touched, and whether suckled or caressed: so that, hoping for victory, he may be led to battle to be killed. And he will ascend from the sides, or from the farthest parts of the North, from where evil is ignited upon all the earth (Jeremiah 1). And he shall be led by the same over the mountains of Israel, whom we must understand to be the apostles and apostolic men and ecclesiastics, so that after he has been led to the mountains of Israel, the bow in his left hand and the arrows held in his right hand may be struck. And he himself, in order to kill those whom he has deceived, imitates having weapons in both his left and right hands, through good and bad reputation. These are the arrows and javelins of which the Psalmist speaks: For behold sinners have bent the bow, they have prepared their arrows in a quiver, to shoot in the dark at the upright of heart (Psalm 10:2). The fiery darts of the devil must be extinguished by the shield of faith (Ephesians 6). Moreover, Gog, who had ascended over the mountains of Israel, will fall and be cast down on those same mountains with all his army and all his troops. And he will be food for the wild beasts, birds, and all the flying creatures and beasts of the earth, namely the adversarial powers that devour the seed along the way and the bloodthirsty beasts. For just as it is written about the dragon, 'You have given him as food to the peoples of Ethiopia' (Psalm 73:14), so those deceived by heretics are food for demons. But Gog, whether in the breadth of the field or in the cultivated land, which is cared for by the farmers of God. For it cannot be that the words of the Lord are in vain. Then fire will be sent upon Magog, that is, upon those who have accepted the teachings of Gog, and upon those who are beaten by the waves of the world like the likeness of islands, and think that they should be secure. That fire of which the Lord speaks: I came to send fire upon the earth; and how I wish that it should burn! (Luke XII, 49); that all may know and understand that I am the Lord, and that the name of my holiness may be made known among my people, who are in no way deceived by the authority of Gog: nor is my name defiled in heretics by the occasion of false knowledge; and that the nations, which are around, may know that I am the Lord. But what follows is said about the judgment of Christ: Behold, he is coming, and it shall be done, the Lord says: He who is coming will come, and he will not delay (Hab. 2:3). And this is the day of punishment and vengeance, of which the Lord spoke through all the prophets. And the inhabitants of the cities of Israel will go out, the people who believe: but by the cities of Israel we understand the Churches of the right faith. And they will set on fire and burn the weapons, of which it is also written in another place: He will break the bow, and shatter the weapons, and burn the shields and spears with fire (Ps. 43:10), shields and spears, bows and arrows, staves of their hands, with which they celebrated the perverted Passover: lances or poles, with which they inflicted wide and incurable wounds of false doctrines: shields, bows and arrows, of which it has been said above. And what follows: And seven years later they will perish by fire, as is explained in Exodus and Leviticus (Exod. XXI; Levit. XXV), in which the Law prescribes that in the seventh year of release, when freedom is restored to the Hebrew slaves and all debts are paid, and the ancient possession is returned to the masters, and rest is given to the land, and all produce is forgiven to the poor, so that in the sacred and perfect number of seven years the armor of the heretics may disappear, and the men of the Church may not cut wood from the fields and regions, and the forests and woods of the nations, which they most desire to save rather than to destroy; but from the heretics whom they have conquered, with shields, spears, arrows, staves, and lances. For they also have various weapons to attack the Church of Christ, which must be ignited by learned men with the fire of the Holy Spirit; namely, the ecclesiastical word, which whoever possesses can say: Was not our heart burning within us while He was opening the Scriptures to us? (Luke 24:32) We cannot have full peace and confidence of habitation unless we plunder all the belongings of our adversaries, so that all may perish and be turned to ashes; and let us plunder those who had previously plundered us, and let us devastate those who had previously devastated the Church. In Hebrw, in the clear light of preaching, he says, 'I will give Gog a named place, a tomb in Israel; according to the Hebrew, a valley of travelers to the east of the sea, which astonishes passers-by. The meaning of this statement is that the tomb of Gog will not be in the mountains, but in the low valleys and in rugged places, which are called Ge in Hebrew. The heretics, although they are in the West, claim that these places are in the East, in order to deceive travelers, namely those who pass through this world and are not residents but strangers, saying that prophetic verse: I am a stranger and a sojourner, like all my fathers (Ps. 38:12).' For who among those passing by, of whom it is written: 'And those who pass by did not say, the blessing of the Lord be upon you' (Ps. 128:8), does not marvel and stand amazed when he sees the valley of travelers, which appears as a valley to travelers but as a mountain to its inhabitants? This is according to the Hebrew. However, the Septuagint translated it as the polyandrion of those who come to the sea; and they shall build around the entrance of the valley. For it is the labor of those who go out from the cities of Israel to close and enclose every entrance and exit of heretical corruption from those who come to the sea, and they delighted in its bitterness, and with the crashing waves and the cruelty of shipwreck, they shall close and enclose, and bury in the depths of the earth, so that they may no longer go out and deceive others with their deceit. Therefore, there they will bury Gog and his entire multitude, which always delights the heretics. And the name of that valley where Gog is buried will be called the Valley of the Multitude, or πολυάνδριον, that is, the tomb of a very large multitude. And as we said above, the weapons of the adversaries will be burned for seven years: thus, for seven months, the land will be cleansed of the filth of the heretics. For from the first month, when we celebrate the Passover of the Lord and avoid the destroyer of Egypt, the lamb with the blood on our doorposts, until the end of the year, that is, until the seventh month when we pitch our tents and are protected among the other branches of palm trees, in order to demonstrate a complete victory against the enemies. We fulfill all the festivals among the people: not only the teachers, but also the entire population will do this eagerly, to bury Gog and cover the land, and by no means allow the free air to be shared. But after the killing and destruction, or the burial of Gog, Ecclesiastical men shall be chosen, who have this study, so that nothing of the former impurities remains in the land of Israel, nor anything of death. They shall search the land, and seek the dead, and bury them, so that the land of the Church may be cleansed. But if, after seven months, when everything should be cleansed, those who go through and surround the land find in any place the bone of a man, that is, the hardness of heretical corruption, or anything of the previous doctrine of death, they shall place it beside that, or they shall build a monument: so that once those who are of this kind have been marked, then they shall either be cleansed or buried with Gog, and cast into the tomb ((or crowd)) of his burial. The name of the city, where the victory of the Lord's servants is, and the adversaries lie down, and the whole multitude of its enemies is prostrated, will be called Amona, or Polyandrion, so that it may be the end of all things, the restoration of purity. Finally, it follows: And they shall cleanse the earth; no doubt those of whom it is written above will begin to seek, and will go around the earth.

The prophet goes on to denounce the Divine judgments against Gog and his army, Eze 39:1-7; and describes their dreadful slaughter, Eze 39:8-10, and burial, Eze 39:11-16, in terms so very lofty and comprehensive, as must certainly denote some very extraordinary interposition of Providence in behalf of the Jews. And to amplify the matter still more, the prophet, with peculiar art and propriety, delays the summoning of all the birds and beasts of prey in nature to feast on the slain, (in allusion to the custom of feasting on the remainder of sacrifices), till after the greater multitudes are buried; to intimate that even the remainder, and as it were the stragglers of such mighty hosts, would be more than sufficient to satisfy their utmost rapacity, Eze 39:17-20. The remaining verses contain a prediction of the great blessedness of the people of God in Gospel times, and of the stability of the kingdom of Christ, Eze 39:21-29. It will be proper to remark that the great northern expedition against the natural Israel, described in this and the preceding chapter, is, from its striking resemblance in the main particulars, put by the writer of the Apocalypse, (Eze 20:7-10), for a much more formidable armament of a multitude of nations in the four quarters of the earth against the pure Christian Church, the Mystical Israel; an event still extremely remote, and which it is thought shall immediately precede the destruction of the world by fire, and the general judgment.

CONTINUATION OF THE PROPHECY AGAINST GOG. (Eze. 39:1-29) Repeated from Eze 38:3, to impress the prophecy more on the mind.

I . . . glorified--in destroying the foe (Eze 28:22).